Hey guys, this is the situation i'm in. We recently hired several new Oil rig safety technicians. We issued them laptops, so they can file their daily safety reports etc. One of the guys we hired was a referral by another employee. He was in the 2 week long training class with the other employees. After day 3, where we issued them a machine, he has since not showed up and we found out from another employee that was sharing the same hotel with him, that he is going to work somewhere else. He is not answering any calls or returning any e-mails, and we are trying to get his machine back. There is always legal action since we do have his social address etc, but before it comes to that i'd like to know what i could have installed/done to remotely render the computer un-operational and/or displayed a warning, play a continuing sound that the machine is stolen. Right now i have vipre and logmein on the machine. With vipre i could terminate all traffic, and with logmein i could try and wait till he is online to do something. but i know he could always take it to best buy or another tech bench to "fix" his problem. So a stolen warning could at least deter a user from keeping the machine, and make them turn it in. Any advice or tools (free or pay) would be greatly appreciated.

47 Replies

At this point, the options you mentioned are about all you've got unless the laptop has a mobile broadband card that you can control through LogMeIn to get GPS information. For future incidents, probably something like LoJack would work and allow you to remote kill and/or locate a laptop to get it back.

I would use viper to stop all traffic immediately, then get the authorities involved to get the machine back. If the referral knows where he is going to be going to work that would be a good place to start with the cops.

The only problem with LoJack and other Software solutions is what if the person formats the drive. Then you are screwed, like Paul635 mentioned you really need GPS as a fool proof system. Of course if the person is dumb enough, which most thieves are.. a software solution will work fine half the time.

I always make sure I have the MAC address of all the company laptops, for both wired and wireless NICS. Also the serial number off of the machine, etc. They have little GPS devices that you could implant into the machines to track them. This might not be very cost effective, just doing a quick google search for "Tiny GPS Tracker" it came up with some good results.

I recently read somewhere about this guy who lost his Laptop and found it using Prey Project. Installed on my home Laptop and it's very handy to locate the laptop once it gets connected to the Internet.

I had a demo from a company that offered an enterprise solution for locating/locking wiping remote equipment, all done through the bios, so no matter what was reinstalled, you would still be able to track it. Sadly I do not remember the name, but will post back when I find it. http://www.absolute.com/en/products/computrace/features.aspx

I would catch it online and run a real quick reg file to add a welcome/warning message to windows logon. State what company the system belongs to and that if it's found to please return. See if they return it.

If they don't, then keep remoting in and seeing if you can find location infomation like, Hotel WiFi info and go get it.

I know Dell has ProSupport Laptop Tracking & Recovery software. The software is embedded in the bios so removal of the software is not possible but you do have to pay for the service. The Company I am with now uses Lenovo and I have yet to see anything like the dell tracking settings in the bios on the Lenovo laptops.